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'Listening to Mr Freckleston' by Katharine Kerr

The bees were first, they knew.
Mr Freckleston said it was because they had special hairs on their knees,
but the skin on his face looked like rhubarb and he talked to himself at the
bus stop, so nobody really listened to him.

They started returning to the hive speckled in white. Nobody
had any idea where it came from or what it was. When the bees stopped
producing honey people were worried, but only then. Mr Freckleston said
not to eat the honey in case any white stuff had got into it, but nobody listened
because sometimes he dribbled and forgot what he was saying.

Small animals were next. They tried to groom the white stuff
from each other’s fur and they started to die. Little rotting bodies
appeared all over and then bigger animals scavenged them. Mr Freckleston
said he would burn every body he found and we should all do the same, but
sometimes he would cry into the night and sound like a banshee, so we didn’t
listen.

Now there are bees and there are animals and there are a few
people who did burn the little bodies and there is Mr Freckleston and there is
not much else. Sometimes he laughs and it is a sad sort of laugh, but
there isn’t anyone left to listen.

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